Old school covering an FA Cup tie!

One of the hardest reporting jobs facing any journalist is the live report dictated on the hoof.

When I first started out as a journalist, and before the age of mobiles, this would involve standing in a draughty phone box, putting ten pence pieces into a slot while reading across a court story to a copy taker off the top of your head while trying to read back scratchy shorthand notes.

With a deadline fast approaching, it was a seat of the pants job, especially if the phone box had its windows smashed in and your voice was competing with passing traffic or an impatient lady who wanted her turn.

In later years the challenge would be to produce running copy stretching to over 1,500 words from a football ground for that afternoon's Saturday sports paper.

 

My first runner was Sheffield Wednesday versus Norwich City at Hillsborough for the Pink Un and I was absolutely bricking it. I'd produced running copy for non-league football matches with ease, but this was a whole new ball game.

Hillsborough was packed with 25,000 fans and you could not prepare anything in advance, you had to wing it by reading across your account to the patient copytaker down the end of the phone, knowing that every paragraph and sentence would be dissected later that evening by long-suffering Canaries' fans who had faithfully queued up to buy the Pink Un at six 'o clock every Saturday evening.

The only advance preparation you would scribble down in the second half was the five paragraph intro depending on which way the game was going – and if it was tight, you'd write three intros; win, lose or draw! Two or three goals in the last five minutes became a total nightmare.

But this was the challenge and I've always regarded the best journalists are sports reporters who can wing it with their copy, in tough conditions where they don't have the advantage of TV replays and when they're having to multi-task by watching a match, taking notes, and reading across copy.

Time has moved on, of course, and although I have covered hundreds of football matches, in recent times there has been less case to do so as my job was changed. Until this weekend, that is, when I was on Teesside for the FA Cup third round clash between Middlesbrough and non-league Hastings United.

Sadly, many of the Saturday evening sports papers have closed, and the technology has changed too.

 

Mobile phones and laptops littered the tightly squeezed press box at the Riverside, reporters filing match day copy for a variety of media including newspapers, websites and for social media. The days of the gnarled but worldy-wise copytaker has long gone – it's a laptop or the latest 3G phone which will suffice.

In East Sussex, this was big news with Hastings United, the most inexperienced team left in the world's most prestigious football competition, taking on the mighty Boro. Now with the wonder of websites, along with Twitter and Facebook, this means that the match was a live event.

We sent a team to Teesside of reporters and photographers, including one scribe who joined the fans on theitr 6am, seven-hour coach trip from the south coast to the north-east. He even had a coach fire to report! And with a recent roll-out of new laptops and mobile phones, we thought this would be a great opportunity to try out the kit in all its glory.

Sadly, it was to be one of those hugely frustrating days when technology lets you down badly. The laptops and mobile phones worked a treat, but could any of us log into the newspaper's secure editorial system? Could we heck!

 

We tried various fixes to get into the system, but to no avail, while those around us, including the rival Argus paper from Brighton, were filing copy merrily.

In the end I took an executive decision midway through the first half to leave my colleagues sitting in the press area.

 

I had headed up to the north-east under my own steam to stay with friends nearby. I called a friend to pick me up from the Riverside, and with laptop in hand I swiftly headed out of the stadium to the bemusement of the stewards since the game was still finely in the balance. I jumped into the car and at breakneck speed we drove back to my friend's home.

There I fortunatley managed to log into the editorial system and we went old school!

 

Yep, I became that gnarled, world-weary copytaker, as my colleagues read their match day copy across to me which I could then file onto the internet. I was thinking about some of my favourite copytakers; there was Jan and Eric at the Portsmouth News, pedantic so-and-sos who thought they could write better than you - and probably could - who always wanted to finish a sentence for you or change some words. They were pretty good too at filling in words.

 

It was strange to see the editorial world turn full circle, but it had to be done to get the copy uploaded swiftly. It wasn't ideal, but we got there in the end.

You can have all the technology you want, but sometimes old habits die hard!